Hort and Mulch
by Chris Walker
Summary: Horticulous Slimux, the Grand Cultivator of Nurgle, is torn from his beloved duties of tending to the Garden of Nurgle. Astride his faithful steed, Mulch, he travels out into the Materium to spread his god's gifts of life, plague, and decay.


'Ploughing, tilling, sowing, growing... Pruning, reaping, threshing, eating...'

The sound of a song sent from peeling, withered lips went out through the dankest recesses of the Garden of Nurgle amidst the heavy droning of numerous clouds of black flies, their dark abdomens fat and swollen. It was a daemon singing it, one belonging to Nurgle and the Garden.

'Ploughing, tilling, sowing, growing... Pruning, reaping, threshing, eating...'

The humdrum little song this old daemon recited as such was one he knew well. One of the first he ever learned to sing, back in the era before time came into existence. It was an extremely simple song that went on and on, repeating endlessly. One verse after the other. As life followed into death. As death begat life.

This singer, with voice so faded, raw and guttural, was one Horticulous Slimux. A plaguebearer of venerable status, wandering with immense purpose through the lands of his god.

Horticulous himself was a character befitting the disgustingly resilient paragons of his breed. A pair of antler-like horns emerged from his crown, one long with jagged edges and points, the other short, snapped off somewhere near its base many an undocumented age ago and left a stump. A bone stuck out from one corner of his whistling mouth in the manner a farmer would with a stalk of wheat. Intestines, alongside other exposed internal organs of dull colours and reeking stenches, dangled loosely from his corpulent, torn stomach, spilling out over his seat and legs. What he was astride upon, carrying him with ease, was his loyal steed, Mulch.

Mulch was a bestial, molluscoid daemon with an appearance resembling that of a giant snail, complete with two bulbous yellow eyes laying at the end of two long stalks on his face alongside a pair of lesser feeler extremities. Upon many sets of legs lined with crusty claws did the creature move, his pace slow but steady as he carried rider, tools and cargo around. What he carried them on, protruding so greatly from his back, was a large, ebon-textured shell.

Cracks, crevices, and simple trinkets were not all that lay upon this spiraling bit of hard, naturally-formed chitinous armour, nor were they its most magnificent features. That honoured place belonged to a gnarled and thin tree growing from the hind of this great shell. At the dark plant's base was from where Horticulous set his seat of faded and stained crimson cloth. At the shell's fore, just past where his feet often reclined, a stick was placed. One end protruded from the shell, the other, bent from duress but never fully yielding to it, held a single, captive nurgling—the most minuscule of Nurgle's daemons.

Mulch, with his simple, bestial mind that knew of hunger more than most things, followed the delightfully squealing little mite dangled so tantalizingly in front of him like a carrot on a stick with his foul jaws wide open; the large and decaying teeth they housed gnashed together constantly, fat and warty tongue extending out to get at least a little taste of the pest, but always remaining just out of reach. It was an easy way to direct the beast in the desired direction. And Horticulous did so actively, and unconditionally despise nurglings. From their annoying antics to their distracting little jests... he cherished grabbing their plump little forms by the horn and feeding them to Mulch when no jovial Great Unclean Ones, which treasured the mites like cheerful little children, were watching.

Firmly set behind Mulch on three rusted chains and digging into the ground touched by the toxic slime trail he produced, hooked on three nails penetrating deep into his dark shell like so many other things, was the great gruntleplough. The gruntleplough was a tool of utmost importance for Horticulous and his duties, as being pulled by Mulch permitted the tilling of the slime-moistened soil of the Garden where life was at its least productive. Dying, warp-tainted earth was here one moment, and in the next, with the passing of the plough, copious life bloomed forth in a vast, lush and reinvigorated variety. Again this little area of land would be brought low by the ravages of time and the inevitability of life's conclusion. Again would it be harvested of all it had by whatever chose to have it. Again would it fall, only to have the cycle begin anew, as Nurgle embodied like so many other things.

There were many individual daemons who helped bring about the bountiful life within the Garden, but the sole responsibility for tending to and maintaining it in its splendid fecundity lay with Horticulous Slimux, the Grand Cultivator of Nurgle. It was an endless task with many a tough challenge to be had, but Horticulous was most content with it. An eternity of caring for his precious beauties, making sure they grew to their fullest and bringing them to heel with his trusty lopping shears if they got too wild in their growth—he would not have it any other way.

Horticulous was still in the midst of singing his song with horned head bowed, when something unexpected occurred. Soon enough did it become evident enough to him that Mulch had stopped moving. With Mulch no longer lumbering along, the gruntleplough had stopped ploughing. Head shaking and his five eyes blinking lazily, Horticulous grunted resentfully. He looked down and swiftly saw what the problem was.

The stick holding the nurgling had been turned aside. And standing there, next to Mulch's wide head, was a figure. Or, as Horticulous decided it to be, the culprit for this unwanted disturbance in his travels.

This stranger had all the features of a nurgle daemon, but there was something off about it. Shorter than most plaguebearers, its otherwise thin shape was dressed in a host of clothing ranging from actual wares to muddy brown rags. Its head was covered by a hood and stained bandages, while a single curving horn protruded from a hole at its top. And it was petting the halted Mulch's head, who seemed to be groaning happily from the affection provided. Performing the action as it was, the character left its arms exposed for Horticulous to see. They were bony, greenish stalks riddled with swelled pustules, some of which had popped and become minuscule craters from whence yellowed pus wept forth in small streams.

Horticulous grunted, making his blatant annoyance known to the stranger, assuming it cared. He could not see what features it bore within the hood it wore, but he knew enough to realize that it, while petting Mulch so happily, was looking directly at him.

The old daemon lolled the bone he was chewing on around with his half-rotted tongue, sucking some of the foetid and musty air into his withered lungs. 'What is you want, little 'un?'

'Nothin',' the creature chittered, the voice light, weedy, and bearing a scant feminine pitch to it. 'Just starin' is all.'

'Staring? At what?' again queried the Gardener. He leaned forward toward her as Mulch continued moaning and murmuring gibberish. Aged and diseased joints within the plaguebearer's ancient, crooked body crackled about with the movement; it was the sound made by a decrepit old tree being pushed about by a summer breeze. 'What business does a ragamuffin of your sort have in these parts, much less with _me?_ What business in petting _my_ mount? I've got places to be, little 'un.'

'An' I wanna pet your beastie,' came her retort, reeking of a childlike stubbornness as it was. 'An'... stare. Because I can! That's _my_ business.'

The daemonling cleared her clumped throat after it became all cluttered from her little, exuberant cry. Next said she, 'You're the one they call "Old Sour-Seed." They say you're Papa Nurgle's oldest daemon ever.' A hint of wonder now permeated her voice. Just a hint, but clear enough to make out. 'I never saw you yet. Is it true? Is it?'

'Hrmf. Mayhaps it is, mayhaps it isn't,' Horticulous grunted, though with a shot of dry cynicism in his tone from the wretched little nickname she uttered so innocently (It was a loathed title, given by the nurglings he was unable to feed to Mulch. They would sometimes murmur it behind his back; they thought he would not listen, but his ears were not always so choked with gunk). His glower hardened, studying her strange form and recognizing what she might be after a short while. He shifted his shears a little further up on his worn and scabby shoulders 'Never saw something quite like your kind in a while, I must admit. But I don't have the time to spend mucking about with questions and answers as you seem to desire, half-breed. I've got a job in need of doing. If you would kindly take your mitts off of Mulch and go away, I would happily return to it.'

The creature did oblige Horticulous, retracting her arms from the daemon mollusk, but only so she could fold them over her cloaked chest. Soon enough, she puffed out most vexedly, 'Oh, bother. You plaguebearers are all the same. Almost. Carin' about work more 'en play... Fine, I'll be gettin' goin'...'

Down Mulch's tail and past the gruntleplough did the stranger begin to travel, one worn boot-covered foot after another. Horticulous watched her the whole way, making sure she wasn't about to get up to more sorts of mischief. His suspicion, it seemed, was proven correct, when she suddenly stopped. Abruptly, she turned back to him, her hidden eyes instantly peering back into his.

'Strange times these are, Mister Slimux' she said, pointing a youthful, if also haggard and gnarled little claw at her elder. She wagged it about, a grin of yellowed teeth coming over what little could be seen of her wide maw beneath the hood she wore. 'Methinks you're gonna have to leave your plantin' behind in a short bit, I do. Ol' Papa Nurgle's got a plan for ya today. Plans about you havin' to go to a place that sorely needs your touch. Congregatin' with folk who want your presence, an' all that.'

Emitting a final, cackling snigger, and the odd deamonling was gone. She skipped off into the depths of the garden and out of sight with nary a trail of eagerly following flies to herald her passing, all before Horticulous could come up with a proper retort. Watching her leave as well as he could, five withered lids rolled over the five clouded eyes set in a careful row on Horticulous' face. His rotten, splintered teeth chewed upon the end bone they held, his confusion soon giving way to muddled acceptance.

'Hrmf. Yes, strange times these are,' he thought aloud. Reaching over, he set the stick holding the nurgling on the fore of Mulch's shell a little to the left, bringing it back into the dumb beast's view where it belonged. As Mulch watched the minuscule daemon squirm and chirp within its bonds, with greedy eyes and maw agape, his many legs started moving forward once more. Sighing and hoisting his shears to a more relaxed position over his shoulder, Horticulous went sitting back a little more on the cloth saddle of his molluscoid mount as it went ambling further on along the path through the Garden. Many of the rash-covered pustules lining his rump popped with the pressure applied to them, leaving an itching and sore feeling behind. The numb sensation of it would serve as a good counter the concern he gained from the strange little creature's speech. The part where she mentioned the Lord of Decay having a plan that would involve ripping him away from his duties like a tick from one's flesh.

He huffed forlornly, knowing that with whatever did end up happening, it was always inevitable. 'Strange times indeed...'


End file.
